nd his oxen
of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even
the doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows. Horrible
reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it, but it frets at Richard when
he is out of her shadow. Often wretchedly he watches the young men of
his own age trooping to their work. Not cloud-work theirs! Work solid,
unambitious, fruitful!

Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped blindfolded
for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters. He
swallowed it comfortably. It was an intoxicating cordial. Himself on
horseback overriding wrecks of Empires! Well might common sense cower
with the meaner animals at the picture. Tacitly they agreed to recast
the civilized globe. The quality of vapour is to melt and shape itself
anew; but it is never the quality of vapour to reassume the same shapes.
Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn to a monstrous
donkey with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes. The
phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those we see in
the skies, and equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith blew. There
was plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or
other. You that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see
the similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish
to you, that a young man of Richard's age, Richard's education and
position, should be in this wild state. Had he not been nursed to
believe he was born for great things? Did she not say she was sure of
it? And to feel base, yet born for better, is enough to make one grasp
at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg. How intense is
his faith to quacks! with what a passion of longing is he not seized to
break somebody's head! They spoke of Italy in low voices. "The time will
come," said she. "And I shall be ready," said he. What rank was he to
take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel, general in chief, or
simple private? Here, as became him, he was much more positive and
specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he save himself
caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course.
Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth
under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the
distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia!
Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and morta